A Big Step in microLEDs brings Smartglasses Closer.

19 Sep

19Sep

Plessey, a leading British embedded technologies developer working on microLED technology, has produced a record-breaking 2.5-micron pixel pitch ultra-high resolution microLED display. This is a substantial step on the road to all-day-wearable smartglasses and other wearables.

Using its propriety monolithic GaN-on-Silicon (GaN-on-Si) technology, Plessey has achieved several display breakthroughs including the latest development of an ultra-fine, ultra-high resolution 2000x2000 pixel display on a 2.5 micron pitch.

The display uses microLEDs, a technology that is playing a critical role in the development of next-generation wearables, AR/VR hardware, and head-up displays (HUDs). They require approximately 20% of the power of typical LCOS or DLP displays and can achieve five times the brightness of OLEDs, enabling comfortable outdoor viewing, states Plessey.

Clive Beech, Senior Director, Business Development, at Plessey, said: “Pixel pitch is key to the physical size of large field displays and to the resolution of the viewed image. These are key attributes in AR systems. The 2k x 2k display scale can be realized in a compact physical form factor and the 2.5micron pixel pitch provides image features with smooth borders and fine detail."

An example of Plessey’s scalable pixel architecture, these microLED display products will enable many new innovations and exciting applications in smartglasses for augmented reality (AR).

Plessey’s GaN-on-Si technology brings many benefits. The low thermal resistance of the silicon substrates allows highly efficient heat extraction resulting in lower junction temperatures with high reliability. The technology also allows impressive energy efficiency, high resolution and contrast. With its similarity to large scale Silicon IC processing, the technology can be scaled to progressively larger wafers, improving cost, uniformity and yield, and taking advantage of the latest advances in Silicon wafer processing tools of the volume IC industry.

Other recent ground-breaking milestones from Plessey in their monolithic microLED emissive display program include the success in March of developing native green output using GaN-on-Si, which naturally emits Blue light. Following in May, SID Display Week 2019 saw the world’s first monolithic GaN-on-silicon microLED emissive display with an 8-micron pitch bonded to a backplane for a full active matrix. I saw these devices at Display Week, and can testify that their image quality is outstanding.

Plessey is continuing to rapidly develop microLED display solutions on their roadmap, including the production of a full RGB display on one wafer by 2020’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Plessey is a provider of full-field emissive microLED displays that combine very high-density RGB pixel arrays with high-performance CMOS backplanes to produce very high-brightness, low-power and high-frame-rate image sources for head-mounted displays (HMDs), and augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) systems. Plessey operates leading-edge 150mm and 200mm wafer processing facilities to undertake design, test and assembly of LED products, and a comprehensive suite of photonic characterization and applications laboratories.

Plessey is based in Plymouth, England. They may be reached at +44 1752 693 000. For more information, visit Plessey’s website, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages.